


But By Degrees

by Violsva



Series: Arte Regendus [5]
Category: Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Angst, Bisexual Character, Closeted Character, F/M, M/M, Marriage, Secrets, The Boscombe Valley Mystery, Victorian Attitudes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-27
Updated: 2013-08-27
Packaged: 2017-12-24 18:58:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,277
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/943490
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Violsva/pseuds/Violsva
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mary Watson builds herself a life and home with her new husband, as secrets tangle around her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	But By Degrees

The weeks leading up to my wedding, as I remembered them later, were occupied entirely with sewing. I had never had much time or reason to think of a trousseau before, and Mrs. Forrester insisted that I be properly turned out. Some of it she had her seamstress make for me, though I protested the expense, but most was left to me. She helped, of course, so every evening when I was not with John we sat up sewing together. Usually we sat in the sitting room, but sometimes we worked in the nursery with young Miss Forrester until her bedtime.

After the girl had been tucked in, Mrs. Forrester would tell me about her husband, dead seven years now. She talked of arranging a household and living with him and their occasional pleasure trips together. On only one subject was she mostly silent. When it came to the secrets of marriage, so to speak, she smiled at me and said, “I have never thought it proper to tell young ladies horror stories before their marriage, and I assume you know the mechanics of the matter, dear.” I did, and she nodded and said only, “All I will tell you, then, is that, with the right man – and everything I have seen of your Dr. Watson suggests that he is – there’s no need for horror stories.”

I appreciated her advice, my previous knowledge in that area being largely confined to my ayah’s tutting and the sorts of stories one hears at boarding school, neither of which were particularly reassuring. But she refused to say any more, and so I considered my marriage with a sort of confused anticipation. That is, that was how I felt about all aspects of marriage, including managing my own establishment, and no longer having to work for a living, and living so closely with another person, and everything to do with a physician’s practice. But it was rather more noticeable in that particular area, and my mind returned to it nightly as the time neared.

My wedding day was as lovely as one could expect in London in November, which is to say not very. It was not, however, actually raining, and John’s face when he saw me in the church made up for the lack of sunlight.

What with the ceremony, and the wedding breakfast at Mrs. Forrester’s, and then going home – to John’s home, I mean – and unpacking things, by supper I wanted to order night to come, like Juliet. I was still a little uncertain, but I desperately wanted to find out what it would be like.

“My dear?” said John after supper. I had gone to the window to look out, and he stood beside me and slipped an arm around my waist.

“Gallop apace, you fiery-footed steeds, and bring in cloudy night immediately,” I said. John laughed, and turned me toward him and kissed me.

“Shall we go to bed, then?” he whispered. “We’re newlyweds, my dear, it’s expected of us.” I smiled and kissed him again.

Assured of my interest, he kissed me more deeply than he had before. I had thought his kisses during our engagement were enjoyable, passionate, sometimes stirring – this one was more than that. His tongue didn’t merely tease my mouth but pressed into it, and I fell against him, kissing him back as much as I could. His arms pulled me flush against him as I clutched at his shoulders. Our mouths fit so well together, and it didn’t seem to matter that I didn’t know what I was doing. He was so much broader and taller than I, and I wanted to be surrounded by him entirely.

“Bed,” he gasped, pulling away. I smiling at him, panting a little, and he smiled back. “Go – prepare. I’ll join you.”

I went up to the – our – bedroom and set to my toilette, closing the curtains first. After a little time I heard him in his adjacent dressing room. When I was in my nightgown – newly made, and lace trimmed, finer than some of my dresses – he knocked at the door between the rooms, and I opened it.

He was in a dark blue dressing gown, and looked so very handsome. I found my breath suddenly coming shorter. I reached for his hand and pulled him into my room.

He kissed me gently, then pulled back, glancing at the candles. He was nervous, I realized. Perhaps as nervous as I.

“If you would prefer,” he said, “it can be in darkness, or clothed.”

I took a breath. It was truly happening, then. “I want to see you,” I said.

He said nothing, but, I think, bit his lip.

“What is it, John?”

He was avoiding my gaze. “I am scarred,” he said. “It isn’t – pleasant. I’ll put out the -”

“John,” I said, thinking quickly. This was important, vitally important. “I love you. I want to see all of you, pleasant or not. I will not be terrified, I promise you.”

I heard him draw in his breath. Then he pulled me toward him and kissed me. His kisses had been passionate before now, and certainly they had been sweet, but this held so much of both that it was almost overwhelming. He held me like something precious, sliding the stiff linen of my new nightgown against my skin.

“Let me see you,” I whispered against his lips, and he pulled away enough to untie his dressing gown. I helped push it off his shoulders.

He was muscled – not too much, but his clothes had tended to hide it, before. He was all gold, in the lamplight. And he was scarred.

There were, I suppose, a few smaller ones, and the one on his leg – I saw that later. The one he had meant was on his left shoulder, just below my eye level.

It was perfectly circular in the middle, with ridges radiating around it. I drew my fingers over the depressed centre and raised lines. My right hand felt the back of his shoulder and found only a round hollow there, not the exploded cluster on the front. I pressed my lips to the pale skin in the centre, and he shook all over.

“ _Mary_ ,” he said, and then he gently raised my head and kissed me.

I cannot describe his kisses after that. His fingers stroked down my back and sides as he pulled me close again. He pulled my nightgown up as he kissed me, then paused to lift it over my head, though I tried to stay close to him, to keep kissing him. He pulled me to the bed and turned me so I sat in his lap, my back against his warm chest. And then his hands – oh, his hands!

It was so warm, and so good, everywhere he touched with those long strokes of his fingers, and then he slid a hand between my legs – they were parted, I hadn’t thought I was doing it – and what he did there -

I did not even know what it was, then, when all the warmth and pleasure merged into something consuming my entire body. I could not control myself, but he held me as I shook, whispering praise and reassurance into my ear.

After, I stared at him as he pulled me to lie properly on the bed. He was breathless, and his eyes were dark. “I had no idea it was like _that_ ,” I said, once I could speak.

He smiled. “That isn’t all of it,” he said. His voice shook. He was a little clumsy as he stroked my face and then raised himself to lie on top of me, his legs between mine. “The rest may be less enjoyable, I’m afraid.”

But it wasn’t, not with John above me and in me, feeling so good and looking so desperate and joyful until he gasped my name and pressed hard into me. After that he stopped moving, just for a moment, his eyes closed as he panted for breath. Then he gently rose off me and shifted to his side, reaching for me. I wanted to touch him still, though we were dreadfully hot and damp with sweat, so we held each other until we fell asleep.

I was overflowing with love for him then – I do not mean that it eventually ended, only that, it seemed, I grew large enough to contain all of it. But it was beyond pleasant, that time, the days when I arranged matters to my and his satisfaction and we learned to live together, to fit into the spaces around each other.

I had few troubles beginning as mistress of my own household. Our servant girl at first was careless and untrained and I could not properly train her, but Mary Jane was the only major difficulty. I went to John to ask if I could give her notice that first time.

“I trust your judgement,” he said. “You are braver than I, my dear. I have simply been putting up with her for the last year. It is your household as much as mine; arrange it as you need.”

So I did, and he relaxed into my alterations with surprising grace, until I was quite confident in taking charge of matters. I was at first on the lookout all the time for signs he would object to my running of the house. Then I realized that whenever he did, he told me, calmly, and we worked something out. Realizing that, that I would not have to guess and puzzle out the differences between us, and learn to understand and ‘manage’ a man – realizing that made me love him more than ever. Living with him, seeing him at the breakfast table and at dinner, held the same joy and charm as our excursions during our courtship had.

So went the days. And the nights, when I could take all my love as he pulled it out of me and _express_ it – they were so very brilliant, spectacular, there are no words.

And when he showed me how to do the same to him ... well. At night I grew quite shameless, and he responded so beautifully.

“There must have been others,” I said one night when we were lying together, finished but not yet asleep.

“Others?” he said vaguely, his cheek pillowed on my shoulder.

“Other women, I mean,” I said. “I am right, am I not? I don’t think less of you if I am, John, certainly not.”

“Oh,” he said. “Well, yes, there were. None anything like you, my dear.”

“No one you loved at all?” It seemed horribly sad. He was older than I, after all. I would not have grudged him a past connection.

“Well,” said John slowly, “not no one. Once or twice. There was someone when I was in University.”

“What happened to her?”

“Oh, it turned out they cared nothing for me. It was a long time ago.”

It must have been more than ten years ago. “None after?”

John sighed a little. “A few women, but it never amounted to much. I certainly wouldn’t do anything to ruin a respectable woman, so the ones I, ah, lay with were – not the sort one could fall in love with, and they were looking for the same thing I was. There has been -” He cut himself off with a deep breath. It sounded almost like a gasp.

“John?” I asked.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I was going to say, there’s been no one recently. No one whom I – no woman I felt anything for. Except you.” He was not looking at me, and his voice was rough.

“But if there has been, you know I don’t mind, so long as it is over with now,” I said. “I know that you love me, John.”

“Yes, I do,” said John. “My dear.” His hand landed over mine on his chest, and he said nothing more for some minutes.

“Oh, my poor dear,” I said. “I’m sorry I’ve made you uncomfortable.”

“No, no, it’s natural that you’d wonder,” he managed.

“I wish we had found each other earlier, or that you at least had not been alone,” I said. I think he smiled.

But he was not calm, not at all, and his tension seemed to grow worse with time. At last his hand clenched into a fist, and he pushed mine away and sat up.

“Excuse me,” he said, not looking at me. “Please excuse me.” Then he climbed over me and out of the bed, shoved open the door to his dressing room, and closed it sharply behind him.

I sat in bed for several minutes, feeling terrible. He’d been hurt, or ashamed, or – I didn’t know what it was. Surely if it was merely being reminded of his former solitude he would have stayed with me? There must be something else, then – some woman he didn’t want to speak of?

But I would leave him to himself. He clearly did not want me to see his pain, and I had only myself to blame for it. It was forward and unfeminine of me to ask, when any former connections of his were clearly over.

I lay down and castigated myself, and tried to rest, but sleep did not come, and John did not return. At last I rose. I would not sleep at all like this, and I could not rise or sit and read with John distressed and alone in the other room.

I rapped at the door between, and opened it very slowly, so that he might know I was coming. He was seated, wrapped in his dressing gown, his face in his hands. “John?” I asked, leaning through the doorway.

He looked up at me as I entered, and winced a little. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I lost track of time.” I crossed to him and knelt before him, placing a hand on his knee.

“You must not think that I mind that you have known women before me, John,” I said. “I certainly don’t – I wouldn’t mind any number of things worse than that. And you would not be who you are if it weren’t for them.” He seemed to relax, and I continued, blushing a little, “You wouldn’t know the things you do if not for them. I ought to be as grateful to them as I am to Mr Holmes for introducing us in the first place.”

John clenched his jaw and looked away from me. I had thought I was helping at first, but clearly I was not. “I’m sorry,” I said. “But you mustn’t be ashamed, John, if that’s what it is. I do love you. I’ll go.”

“No, don’t,” he said, pressing my hand between his. I felt traces of tears against my skin. He turned back towards me, and bent and kissed my hair. “You are so very sweet,” he said. “And so surprising. And I want to tell you everything about myself, my dear, just because you are you.”

“You can,” I said. “I want to know everything about you.” He froze with a gasp, then seemed to force himself to relax a little. “John?” I said.

“Nothing,” he said. “It’s nothing.”

“Nothing about you would shock me,” I said.

“Oh, beloved,” said John. “Oh, my dear. Don’t worry over it. I would trust you with my life. Come, let’s go to bed.”

I don’t think either of us slept for some time, but he lay perfectly still next to me, his breathing very even, and, feeling guilty, I did not disturb him.

He apologized to me the next morning, and I apologized to him, and each of us told the other not to apologize, and so we made it up.

It was the one blot, the one thing he would not explain and I could not simply understand. But I did not try, when it had pained him so, and at all other times he grew to be completely relaxed around me, and I could accept that. I did not let myself dwell on it.

By spring we had fallen into a lovely only slightly interrupted rhythm, of his patients and my domestic work and every few weeks another of Mr Holmes’ cases. Sometimes John went to him, sometimes he dropped by (usually after I had retired or gone out), sometimes it was just a telegram. But John went more then willingly, almost every time.

I am perhaps a little jealous, not of Mr Holmes, as everyone seems to think I ought to be, but of _John_ , going off on such adventures. But he always tells me of them afterwards, and he is such a wonderful storyteller – better in person even than in his writings. And I suspect it is far more enjoyable to sit by a warm fire knitting while hearing of such dangers than it would be to actually run about and wait for hours in dark cellars and nearly be shot. I enjoyed seeing Mr Holmes solve my own mystery, but I did not at all enjoy the uncertainty and worry before I read _A Study in Scarlet_ and conceived the idea of placing myself and my case in his hands.

Therefore, when a telegram summoning John to Boscombe Valley arrived one morning early in June, I encouraged him, for he had seen little of Mr Holmes lately and he was nearly always better for it when he did. He packed hurriedly but kissed me slowly and sweetly before he left.

He was gone overnight, but the next afternoon, I received a telegram saying that he would be home for supper, and had convinced Mr Holmes to join us. The cook was not overpleased at the short notice, but I was happy, for it was dreadfully difficult to persuade Mr Holmes out of Baker Street, but when our guest he was generally a charming and fascinating conversationalist.

They returned early in the evening, and spent some time refreshing themselves. John came down first, met me in the drawing room, and kissed me. It was months into our marriage, and still I missed him terribly when he was away for a single night. But it was so very much made up for by what came after his return.

When we had reluctantly parted, I said, as I always did, “Tell me what happened.” And as always, he began at once.

It had been a murder. The son of the victim had been a prime suspect, but his friend – clearly his sweetheart, in fact – had called for Mr Holmes despite the police’s insistence that the case was a simple one. At that point Mr Holmes himself entered.

“It was very simple,” he said, “merely not in the way Lestrade thought. Good evening again, Watson, Mrs. Watson.”

We greeted him and invited him to sit down. “Dinner will be only an hour more,” I said.

“I apologize for the lack of notice.”

“No, you are always welcome,” I said. “Tell me how the case was simple. It seems to me that the son – James? – was very tangled up in it. How did you see through that?”

“I was certainly perplexed,” said John.

“The son’s presence was the only thing that made it at all complicated. He was a distraction from the details that would have been clear if he was treated merely as a witness. If one assumed that his meeting with his father was entirely by chance, the presence of another person became clear.”

He explained his conversation with the man. I thought of how James McCarthy must have felt, helpless grief mingled with guilt for the argument and his departure, and shuddered. Not to mention the feeling of being held apart from something so dearly wished for.

“The poor man,” I said, “so close to what he wanted, but kept from it.”

“Yes,” said Mr Holmes. “This morning we examined the ground, however, and that largely cleared the matter up.”

He told me what he had found at the site, and what it had told him. He paused after giving his description of the man.

“A man from Australia,” I said. “Surely you would have mentioned if there were any others who had recently come to the neighbourhood?”

“There were none.”

“Then,” I said slowly, “it could only have been Mr Turner.”

“Exactly.” He smiled at me, with a faint approval that caused me to sit straighter in my chair.

“But why?”

John winced. “It’s a rather sad tale.”

He and Mr Holmes told me of Jack Turner’s former life and misfortunes. It was indeed a grim story, and the thought of living so close to someone with such power over you was chilling. Even worse was the thought that it might have blighted both their children’s lives. After it was done we three sat in a long, dark silence.

“God help us,” said Mr Holmes quietly. “Why does fate play such tricks with poor, helpless worms? I never hear of such a case as that that I do not think of Baxter’s words, and say, ‘There, but for the grace of God, goes Sherlock Holmes.’”

“And all of us,” said John.

“Neither of you could have such terrible secrets,” I said, feeling a cloud ready to descend over the room.

Mr Holmes turned his head to look at me, one eyebrow raised, then fixed his gaze on John. His face held a calm, blank expression that I had not seen there before.

“Quite so,” he said, “and let us hope that for those who do the past can easily be erased.” John flinched.

At that point, the maid arrived to call us to dinner, but the conversation there was stilted and formal, and my attempts to change that only made it seem more obvious. Mr Holmes did not speak to John, not properly, and John spoke hardly at all. And I didn’t know why, and couldn’t ask. Perhaps later, but not with Mr Holmes right there. He is kind enough, and I owe him a great deal, but after his investigation of my father’s death I never again have felt entirely comfortable speaking to him personally, though I don’t know why.

All I could do was talk about music and ignore the tension behind our words. Mr Holmes stood very soon after the last course was served.

“I had better be going,” he said. “I’ve matters to attend to at Baker Street. Thank you very much for your hospitality, Mrs. Watson. I can see myself out.”

“No, I’ll come,” said John, rising.

“Of course we shall,” I said. I don’t know why I said it, but there was something in Mr Holmes’ face at John’s words that seemed ... wrong. As if he wanted protection from something.

So we all went to the front hall, as I thanked Mr Holmes for recommending some concert and felt like I was chattering uselessly, though both of them replied as usual. Mr Holmes left quickly, though his words and tone and every movement remained entirely polite.

John watched him from the door with pain clearly visible in his face. Some time after Mr Holmes had walked out of sight he closed the door and turned to find me standing in the foyer, not able to hide my concern. He smiled at me, distantly.

“I had better ask Anstruther about my patients,” he said, pulling his hat from the hatstand. I nodded, and he went out.

It was unlike him. In every other difficulty he turned to me for comfort. In the rest of his life he told me anything I asked and much before I asked. He even asked my advice, very often. He told me all about his cases with Mr Holmes. But he never told me when they had quarrelled, though I often thought they must have. In that area of his life, and that only, I knew nothing.

When he came back, rather later than I had expected, he kissed me softly but too quickly and said he was going up to bed. There was no invitation in any of his actions.

So I stayed up for longer than was my usual habit, especially after John’s absences, determinedly doing everything I had been putting off or considering for the house and the two servants. I went to bed at last, and did not disturb John, whether he was truly asleep or merely appeared so.

So very unlike him, and I still could not ask.

But that was not my concern, not truly. It was not so odd that he would want to keep his disagreements with his friend between them. I rather hoped that he did not go to Holmes with all of our quarrels, and I couldn’t expect he would do otherwise for his friend. But I knew they were not always so close as he often made it appear, and I wished I could help him.

It was not repeated. Matters between us became quite as usual the next day, to my relief, and in a few days he was entirely himself again. But it is not uncommon for him to show some irritation with his friend. There is often a slight frown in his face when he speaks more personally of Mr Holmes. I think his concern is perhaps excessive, though I would not say so to him. I know he cares deeply about Mr Holmes, and worries over him, especially the cocaine. It is clear to me, however, that Mr Holmes would not seriously endanger his mind, since that is all he seems to think important.


End file.
